Top 10 Social Media News Stories this Week 4/17/2015

April 19, 2015

The week in social media news hand-curated by your friends at Fandom Marketing. Snapchat rolled out a major update that will “change your life” and Twitter began testing a revamped search design. Facebook claimed to be winning the battle against fake likes, in addition to rolling out a web browser version of its standalone Messenger app.

Snapchat Makes New Efforts to Push out Third-party Developers

April 2, 2015

Third-party Snapchat apps are about to get a lot less reliable. The company is taking new steps to tighten security and limit outside apps’ access to its service, the company revealed Thursday.

Snapchat Thinks Its New Emoji Feature Will Change Your Life

April 6, 2015

Snapchat peeved users in January when it yanked its popular “best friends” feature, which showed the people you snapped with the most. Now, the ephemeral messaging app is betting that a major update rolled out Monday, which replaces the feature with emoji characters, will “change your life.”

Twitter Officially Lets You Retweet with Comments Now

April 7, 2015

Twitter revamped its retweet feature on Monday, making it easier for users to plug other people’s tweets and add commentary of their own. Retweeting was a more tedious process until now if folks wanted to comment on a link. You either manually copied and pasted the link into a fresh tweet, or if you wanted to offer more context, copy-pasted a tweet’s original text into a new tweet with a comment shoehorned in — so long as you stuck to that 140 character limit.

Twitter’s Latest Experiment Gives Search Results a Makeover

April 8, 2015

If you’ve noticed Twitter searches on the web looking different lately, it’s not just you. Twitter is testing a revamped search design, the company confirmed to Mashable Wednesday. The new search, which is currently available on Twitter.com to some users, includes new tabs that allow you sort tweets based on account, popularity, photos, videos and other categories.

Facebook Launches Standalone Messaging App for the Web

April 8, 2015

Facebook rolled out a web browser version of its standalone Messenger app on Wednesday. Like the Messenger mobile app, the web platform — which can be found at messenger.com— is completely separate from the rest of the site and has the same barebones look. But unlike the mobile app, the social network claims it will not force the new service on its users.

Q1 2015 Social Logins: Facebook Extends Overall Lead, Back on Top in B2B

April 13, 2015

Facebook, which in Q4 2014 looked in danger of surrendering its lead in social logins to Google, has widened the gap again in Q1, according to Janrain. With 45% market share, Facebook remained ahead of its only close competitor, Google (37%), with Twitter (5%) trailing. In the competitive B2B space, Facebook (35%) surpassed Q4’s leader LinkedIn (25%) for the top spot.

Twitter.com Gets a Refresh

April 15, 2015

People who log in to Twitter get the full experience: they can browse the complete catalog of public Tweets, Tweet themselves or engage with Tweets they see. On Wednesday, Twitter made a big change for the many millions of people who visit every month who don’t log in, but still want to know what’s happening.

Social Network Ad Spending to Hit $23.68 Billion Worldwide in 2015

April 15, 2015

Advertisers worldwide will spend $23.68 billion on paid media to reach consumers on social networks this year, according to new figures from eMarketer, a 33.5% increase from 2014. By 2017, social network ad spending will reach $35.98 billion, representing 16.0% of all digital ad spending globally.

US Adults Spend 5.5 Hours with Video Content Each Day

April 16, 2015

Adults in the US will spend an average of 5 hours, 31 minutes watching video each day this year, according to new figures from eMarketer, and digital video viewing across devices is driving growth. In 2011, time spent with video on digital devices—PCs, mobile devices and other connected devices including over-the-top (OTT) and game consoles—totaled 21 minutes daily.

Facebook Says It’s Winning the Battle Against Fake Likes

April 17, 2015

Anyone still buying Facebook likes? Apparently, there’s still a market as a Google search shows but Facebook said today that its defenses against fraudulent likes are stronger than ever. The message to marketers tempted to boost likes with cash: Don’t waste your money.

What We’re Watching

The fun part about working in marketing is experimenting with all the new apps that come out. I learn how to use something personally before forming recommendations to clients. Have some fun with Snapchat by trying out these artistic tricks.

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